PCB for SNES-iCade-Adapter

Previously, I presented my SNES-to-USB-Adapter. The adapter emulates a USB keyboard with which it is also possible to play iCade games on the iPad. Now, my ambition is to give it a more professional and solid look and one thing to do would be to put most of the wiring into a printed-circuit board (PCB).

Therefore, I did a small survey about available PCB layout software for Macs and found EAGLE working well for me. As far as I have seen, EAGLE is widely used and there exist versions for Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms. The tutorials from Sparkfun and also this tutorial already helped me a lot and let me design my first PCB.

With another goal being to shrink the whole design of the first prototype of the adapter, I decided to try out the ProMicro board, which is Arduino compatible and very small. Furthermore, it already has the capability of presenting itself as a USB keyboard to its host. With the given schematics of the ProMicro board, which can be downloaded from the product page, I designed a PCB which captures the same functionality as my first prototype of the adapter. Besides all the wiring that has gone into the PCB, however, all external interfaces, like the SNES connectors and the button, are now nicely connected with shrouded headers and ribbon crimp connectors. The final schematic looks like this:

There exists a plugin for the 3D modeling software “SketchUp” that converts an EAGLE schematic into a 3D model called “EagleUp.” This is the 3D preview of the PCB:

I just ordered this PCB and have to wait for about two weeks now until I can solder and assemble it. I hope to find the time for creating a draft of a case during that time.

Update 1:

A few days ago I received the PCBs. I decided to order them from PCB Pool and I am very satisfied with their service. The pricing is very transparent, they provide a plugin for EAGLE, and you can opt for mail notifications throughout the production process. These are the images that I received during the last days. They show the board after drilling, resist exposure, tin stripping, and burning-in:

I assembled and tested one of the boards and am glad that everything is working!

Actually, I received more than ten of these boards, so if someone is interested to also get one of these, just let me know …

Update 2:

You can download the schematics and the board layout in EAGLE format here: [wpdm_package id=5].

26 Comments

[…] which is an SNES-controller interface for the Raspberry Pi. A core element of this interface is a SNES-adapter PCB that I recently designed and that does nothing more than providing all needed connections between […]

Hej, love your post. I just started my own pi-tendo project. but i was wondering. Is it nescesary to use the extra pcb. Isn’t it possible to just hook the original snes controller ports directly to the gpio?

[…] ProMicro board. While this might (by far) not be a widespread standard, it fits perfectly to the SNES-adapter board that I presented some time ago. The dimensions of the board are only 1.3in x 2.3in (33mm x 58.4mm). […]

Actually, it is already possible to use the adapter board with NES connectors! This is possible, because both, SNES and NES connectors, have the same number of pins and (nearly) the same polling protocol.

[…] which is an SNES-controller interface for the Raspberry Pi. A core element of this interface is a SNES-adapter PCB that I recently designed and that does nothing more than providing all needed connections between […]

[…] for these controllers. This is where the second part of this post comes into play: I built an adapter board that allows you to connect two SNES connectors to the GPIO pins of the Raspberry. A short C program […]

[…] ProMicro board. While this might (by far) not be a widespread standard, it fits perfectly to the SNES-adapter board that I presented some time ago. The dimensions of the board are only 1.3in x 2.3in (33mm x 58.4mm). […]